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User talk:Cedges/Dex Monk (3.5e Optimized Character Build)
Unarmed Strikes and Two-Weapon Fighting Can't combine the two unfortunately, since each creature has one unarmed strike (which counts as an attack with a miscellaneous part of their body). However, you might want to check out Snap Kick (Tome of Battle) for an extra unarmed attack. Superior Unarmed Strike can also increase your damage by making you count as a monk 4 levels higher for the purpose of unarmed damage. --Ghostwheel 06:40, June 4, 2010 (UTC) : I didn't even go into weapons or whether to use unarmed strike. You can mix unarmed strike with two weapon fighting; two-weapon fighting explicitly lists unarmed strike as a possibility for an off-hand attack, and the 3.5 FAQ gives an example of a two-weapon flurry with a light weapon in the off hand and unarmed strike being the main weapon. You do need a second "weapon", but it doesn't really matter; you can use flurry of blows with special monk weapons. If you really want most of your strikes to be unarmed then every main hand strike can be unarmed and every extra flurry strike can be unarmed (by flurry text), and only your three off-hand attacks will be done with a weapon. A Quarterstaff (double) or Nunchaku (light) does bludgeoning damage, and so will get all the benefits of the weapon specializations by level 12, including weapon finesse (which now applies to all light weapons) for the nunchaku and possibly (depending on how you read things) the light end of a quarterstaff. Snap Kick is exactly the sort of thing I was looking to add. Awesome -Cedges 07:45, June 4, 2010 (UTC) :: Sure, that works. That said, you might wanna check the DPR, looks a little low for a charop build. --Ghostwheel 07:55, June 4, 2010 (UTC) ::: Starting at level 20, we're facing enemies with 40 AC. Our dex is 36 = 18 + 2 (strongheart halfling) + 5(levels) + 5(inherent) +6 (item). Total main attack is +32 = +17 BAB, +13 dex, +1 size, +5 enhancement, -4 penalty. On the off round, we hit most foes with essentially every touch attack except natural ones, garnering about a +45 damage bonus out of our maximum possible 50. On the on round we hit with the 7 main attacks 12/20ths of the time, doing 7*12/20*45=189 damage and gaining about a +4 bonus to attack which lets us hit with the next two attacks over half the time for 2*11/20*45=49.5 damage. The -14s are now -9s beacuse we're at about +5, letting us still hit 7/20ths of the time for 2*7/20*45=31.5 damage, and bumping us up to +6 for the -19, letting us win it 3/20ths of the time, for 3/20*45=6.75 damage. This gives us 276.75 damage for the two rounds or 138.375/round before damage from attacks and strength and extra damage dice. We're doing quite a bit more than your non-optimized goal of 50, but I don't know where we need to be for "optimized". Some of yours are obscene compared to this. Stongheart halfling trumps human because a +1 to attack bonus is worth 12/20*45 damage per 2 rounds. An additional +1 to damage rolls is worth +6.15 (number of times we're hitting/2 rounds) damage per 2 rounds. We're hitting 2.1 times/2 rounds with off-hand, non-unarmed weapon. Snap Kick is actually hurting us badly on the on round, since it subtracts 22/20 chances from the other 11 attacks, or 11/20ths if it hits, and only adds 12/20ths from itself. It's still pretty good on the touch rounds, where it adds +5 damage to the attack rounds, or about 30 damage per 2 rounds, better than a +1 to attack bonus. -Cedges 10:21, June 4, 2010 (UTC) :::: What happens if you're fighting someone who moves away from you every round? Say... 30'? How's your damage look then? Also, are you factoring the round that you need to regain dancing mongoose in there, or not using it? --Ghostwheel 10:29, June 4, 2010 (UTC) ::::: There's no round needed to regain dancing mongoose, because the warblade recovers his maneuvers as a swift action on the same turn that he either attacks or burns a standard action. Attacking with the melee touches to charge up is a regular attack action (or full round attack) with nothing required to activate it but a choice, and thus can be done in the same round as recovering all maneuvers. If they run away, we do significantly less damage. We can chase them down and do ordinary sized damage. If we could somehow get leaping dragon stance, which is a 3rd level stance, we could bounce around chasing people down with sudden leap, jumping 30'+ at a time as a swift action, instead of the current 10-15' plus a 5 foot step. Or we could give up one of our precious feats for Evasive Reflexes (ToB), and take up to 14 five foot steps/round to chase down foes that withdraw in such a way that we threaten them (i.e not full round withdraw or 10' free steps). -Cedges 11:16, June 4, 2010 (UTC) :::::: Sure, you're attacking when regaining maneuvers... but only once. If you're using that to charge up Combat Rhythm, that's only +5 damage to attacks the next round; how would the damage look then, if you need to continue moving close to them? You'd also be unable to use Swift Leap on rounds when you're recharging maneuvers, and can't use it again until it recharges. Also, I believe that a single action provokes only a single attack of opportunity, so you're at most stepping 5', not 14 x 5' (same thing with a reach weapon like a spiked chain--if you're adjacent to someone and move 20' away while they have a spiked chain, they don't get 2 AoOs against you despite the fact that you're leaving two of their threatened squares). Enemies, especially at level 20, aren't generally too dumb; what's the damage like if an enemy moves away after every time that you make a full combat rhythm flurry of touch attacks? Also, wouldn't exactly be able to use dancing mongoose and swift leap in the same round--or switch stances and do either of those for that matter... :-/ --Ghostwheel 11:38, June 4, 2010 (UTC) ::::::: You're underestimating the warblade's ability to regain maneuvers: "You can recover all expended maneuvers with a single swift action, which must be immediately followed in the same round with a melee attack or using a standard action to do nothing else in the round (such as executing a quick, harmless fl ourish with your weapon)." Pedantically "a melee attack" could mean only this but then lots and lots of other things in the game just plain wouldn't work. The glossary defines it rather uselessly as "A physical attack suitable for close combat." I still need to solve the closing problem; you're correct that only one 5' step would be possible with Evasive Reflexes. There are possibilities to explore in the shuriken/sai direction which only require one of the easiest feats in the game to get (Quick Draw). Then the rhythm would look like 1) normal round and recharge, 2) jump in and make touch attacks, 3) unload either in melee or with thrown weapons, start over, possibly at 2 if the enemy didn't move. I'd need to go through the melee feats carefully and see how or if they apply to thrown melee weapons. -Cedges 12:41, June 4, 2010 (UTC) :::::::: Gah! I'm getting which things in ToB work with ranged mixed up. Stormguard definitely does not. -Cedges 13:01, June 4, 2010 (UTC) Replacement for Fighter If you still want Crushing Strike and can spare feats, you might want to pick up 6 levels of warblade later so you can take Weapon Specialization (and later Crushing Strike). That can also net you Dancing Mongoose, which will give you another two attacks on the round you activate it. --Ghostwheel 06:45, June 4, 2010 (UTC) : The way I read initiator levels, anyone with 8 levels of anything gaining one level of swordsage or warblade could take dancing mongoose, which is amazing for this build, since we recover all the maneuvers on the touch round, and it gives two more full bonus attacks on the damage round. The extra -2 from snap kick starts to look a lot worse when you already have 6 attacks at -2, though half the penalty goes away if you have crushing strike and hit on the first one. Some other amazing and probably essential maneuvers are the ones that let us follow a foe that runs away, though I'm not sure how well they work with full round attacks or not being a swordsage. -Cedges 08:02, June 4, 2010 (UTC) :: Oops, the initiator level would be 5 then, which only gives access to 3rd level maneuvers. 5th level maneuvers require an initiator level of 9. -Cedges 08:20, June 4, 2010 (UTC) ::: Which you could get if you went monk 6 / warblade 6--that would get you 5th level maneuvers. --Ghostwheel 08:59, June 4, 2010 (UTC)